Awesome Vintage Chair

Check out this chair that I bought for $5!

Sweet.

I'm a welder. I weld.

I went to Oregon for a few weeks this summer to visit my grandparent and my grandpa taught me the basics of welding.

We made this table as my learning project. The wood is maple (I think) and it's all end grain. We cut each block and then glued them all together, you can see it a little better in the black and white pictures. I think we did a pretty good job.

A Few Things About Peanut

There are a few things that have happened this week that I can't ever forget.

1. She pooped in the toilet all by herself! Every time I change her poopy diapers she insists on seeing it. It's like she refuses to think that she actually deposited a dirty investment in her diaper unless she can see proof. Well, I tell her: "Pen, you can see your poop if you go in a toilet," on the off chance that she might actually take me up on that offer. It's a strange incentive, I know.

Pen is pretty good at warning us before she makes her dirty deposit, but I've never quite been able to get her to do it on the toilet. I'll sit her on the toilet for a couple of minutes, she'll pee, ask for her diaper then poop in the diaper about 5 minutes later. This week I was determined would be different. I kept telling her when she was on the potty that I'd go & buy her lots & lots of candy if she pooped on the toilet. SHE DID IT. Funny thing, she wanted to look at her poop more than she wanted the candy. She even insisted on smelling the poop. Go right ahead, my dear. After she smelled it, she just kept chanting, "Eww, disgusting!"

Potty training victory will soon be ours. I just know it.

2. It snowed this week. Penelope LOVES playing in the snow; she especially loves making snowmen & snowballs. The morning after, Pen & I were in my studio working on a project when Penelope noticed the maintenance guys shoveling our walks. Clearly upset by their industriousness, she started banging as hard as she could on the window & yelling at them, "DOP! DOP!! NO CLEAN! NO CLEAN SNOW!!!" She did that for a few minutes before giving up, stomping into the hallway, plopping on the floor & pouting, "Dammit, no clean snow."

First, I'm not swearing anymore & second, she hasn't said that word since Christmas, so you can imagine my shock when she used it. I was also shocked at how well she used it, too. My little girl knows how to swear.

3. Penelope is now in a "toddler bed" a.k.a. her Pteranodon nest. She loves dinosaur train, so we call her tent her Pteranodon nest to get her excited about being in there. We've been laying down the law the last couple of weeks to try & keep her in her tent when she goes down for naps & bedtime. We've had quite a bit of success, too! Penelope now knows that if she gets out, not only will we turn off her doggy light, but we'll shut the door & give her a time out if necessary. We're NOT messing around here. I don't want to be dealing with bedtime training when Felix comes to town!

The other day, she woke up from her nap, got out of her tent, knocked on the door & ran back into her tent to wait for me to get her! I thought it was super adorable. She really is a good little girl.

The Peanut and the Doggie Door

I snapped these over winter break. Nels makes me smile.

News-Bouquet

I saw some of these at a friends house and thought they were rather rad so I made a bouquet for our apartment.

I found the pog/faces on the ground at school, they're actually ads for Orca grants.

Poopsicles

Last night after we put Penelope down to bed, I kept hearing whines coming from her room. Normally I let her sort things out on her own (she's a big girl) & fall asleep by herself, but this time I heard her ask specifically for me & water. I couldn't let her down.

I wobbled up stairs & went in her room to ask if she wanted water. Not wanting to make a fuss, I had intentionally left the light off in the room & allowed the light from the hallway to filter in. I couldn't really see much, but when I walked up to the crib to ask Pen what was the matter she said, "Poop!" I couldn't see anything, but I did know she wanted to go potty.

FYI: Penelope calls both pee & poop, poop.

So, I grabbed her to take her to the potty to see if she'd be interested in going & LO & BEHOLD!!! She was naked. Aw, shoot. I turned on the bedroom light to discover what she had been up to. She had taken off all of her clothes, grabbed the toy box next to her bed, emptied the box of its contents & PEED IN THE BOX. She didn't get all of her pee in the box, though; It sprayed all over pretty much everything in her crib.

Awesome. Welcome to potty training.

Finishing . . .

Sentences.

Last Sunday night when we went on our usual walk. Penelope is pretty good at staying in her stroller without complaint, unless we stop. Not sure we stopped a whole lot, but she wanted to get out anyway.

We got her out & let her push the stroller for a bit. That never works. She wants to do it all by herself & still doesn't know how to steer. Chris grabbed her & put her on his shoulders. She liked that so much, she started rocking back and forth with a huge smile on her face.

Chris: What is she doing up there?

Me: She's pretending she's riding on um. . . a . . .

Penelope: HORSE!!

Penelope finished my sentence for me!! This was a first. I thought it was so adorable to hear such a sweet, little voice finish my sentence for me. What a doll.

Penelope & Her Words

Penelope is funny with her words. She's pretty good at pronouncing most things, but every once in a while a few words come out completely wrong.

Here are some of those words:

Peanuts (plural) sounds like penis.

Chalk sounds like cock.

Frog still sounds like f#$%

Flag also sounds like f#$%

Shirt sounds like s$^%

And then there's one word that she knows & says correctly. Yesterday she was playing with something in her car seat & exclaimed, "dammit!" when it dropped on the floor. I wonder where she learned that from.

I've got to start washing my mouth out with soap.

Goodbye Family!

Sesame Street: Potty Time

Penelope. This is for you.

Annie Get Your Gun

Over the fourth of July weekend we ventured over to Grandma & Grandpa Newton's for family dinner. Penelope & Ayden had a crazy fun time playing with the vintage dressups. Penelope especially enjoyed wearing the hard hat & holding either the toy machine gun or toy rifle. I thought it was pretty cute.

Ayden also has an obsession over Penelope's shoes, so she's wearing Ayden's cowboy boots in the pic. So cute.

Reason #18736 Why a Trustworthy Dentist is Important

Our dental experience in California was traumatizing to say the least. We went through one dishonest dentist after another before we found one that we could trust. Why is that?

Upon getting dental insurance here in Utah, I emailed my mom to see who her dentist was as she had been raving and raving about her dentist for years. Dr. Blackwood married the daughter of a family friend, so my mom knew him & always told me that she trusted his medical opinion. As soon as I found out they'd take our insurance, I booked appointments for all of us. Dr. Blackwood's secretary said that it would be okay for Penelope to hang out at my appointment. OK. Nice. I don't like the thought of finding a babysitter.

Today was teeth cleaning day for the Esplin fam, SLC division. Upon walking into the office, Dr. Blackwood greeted me by name & asked all sorts of questions about my parents, Penelope, my family, etc. He even took the time to show Penelope the toys and play with her. Cool!

The dental hygienist took me to get X-rays & start on the cleaning process while Dr. Blackwood spent time playing with Penelope. I was afraid Penelope might cause a ruckus while I was gone, so I set her on one of the chairs with her blanket & my iPhone (which was playing Babe, her favorite pig movie).

While I was in the chair, the secretary came up to me & asked if perhaps Penelope would be more interested in Nemo on the big TV rather than watching Babe on the phone; I agreed, trusting that she'd probably put my phone somewhere. Maybe I should've asked for her to bring it to me, but I'm pretty sure my mouth was full of mirrors & a suction device to really say much of anything.

The cleaning went pretty well & the hygienist and Dr. Blackwood agreed that my teeth were doing really well, save a few broken fillings (darn you blasted crooked California dentists!) and a couple of minor cavities. Dr. Blackwood even went so far as to bust out his really nice camera to take close-up shots of my broken fillings. Yeah, those definitely need to be replaced. I left the chair feeling pretty empowered over my teeth (unusual for dentist appointments in my experience).

Penelope and I sat in the chair while the hygienist & Dr. Blackwood counted her teeth. She was so scared, but she did pretty well. Hopefully next time she'll be more receptive to strangers pointing gloved fingers in her mouth.

Once we were done, Penelope and I headed up to the front to gather our things & get the estimate on the work needed to be done. Where was my phone? I looked all around the lobby & couldn't find it anywhere all while trying to keep Penelope from spilling filtered water all over the floor. She was losing it. I was losing it.

Finally, I asked the secretary if she put it somewhere. She had put it on top of the refrigerator next to the water filter. Not there. The two of us searched through toy bins, under chairs, around plants & no phone. She called it. I called it. I knew the ringer was on, but I couldn't hear it anywhere! I was starting to panic. OH NO. I'm unplugged! What will I do without Tweetdeck! GoogleReader! MAIL! CATAN!!!!!

After about 10 minutes of thoroughly searching the entire office, the secretary started to call patients that were in the lobby around the same time. There was a mother that was there with her son, who could've mistook it for a toy & walked off with it. Perhaps? Nope. Now Dr. Blackwood caught wind of the missing iPhone. He sprung into action.

He recalled a woman (not a patient) who had been waiting for her friend (a patient-also a lawyer), and figures she was the only one that the secretary hadn't contacted about the phone. He called the patient and calmly said something like: One of my patient's is missing her phone. If your friend has it, could you please tell her to return the phone to the office by the end of the day? No questions asked. Otherwise, I'll be contacting the police to get this resolved.

What would you know, the phone was delivered to the dental office next door and in my hands in less than 15 minutes! Seriously. So awesome. I couldn't have been more overjoyed to see my phone! As it turns out this woman had deleted my mail information and was in the process of deleting all of my contacts. She was going to make it hers. What a tool. Who steals a phone? Who steals a phone from a 2 year old in a dental office? Obviously a crazy lady with red glasses.

Moral to the story: don't steal phones & make sure you have a rockstar for a dentist.

Fourth of July Staycation

Chris and I were fantasizing about going camping, hiking or doing something that involved getting out of the Salt Lake valley for our Fourth of July weekend. We made sure we had a good time, but we didn't really end up doing any of those things. Sort of.

We didn't feel like packing up the house & camping, so we decided to backyard camp instead. Penelope had a great time playing in the tent, but didn't actually end up sleeping in the tent. She was just much too excited to explore the backyard at 1am to sleep. She ended up sleeping in her crib. At about 5am the birds started squawking, so we also ended up in our own beds after a while. It was still fun.

Before we slept, we had a nice bonfire in the backyard with marshmallows, nutella, graham crackers and sausages. Nutella is the way to go if you want to make a good s'more, btw.

After we woke up & recovered from the late night, we headed up to Park City to wander around. We grabbed some lunch & headed to one of my favorite haunts: the duck pond. I remember going here several times a year with my family to feed the ducks. It was a real treat to share this moment with Chris & Penelope.

We headed to the Alpine slide to see if it was something that Penelope could do with us, but we totally bailed. I couldn't seem to justify spending $50 for all of us to go down a little slide. Someday we'll do it. Not yesterday, though.

We hung around Main Street & wandered around galleries. Some were definitely better than others. We walked through an art gallery of some photographer who put up field notes on his photos (cool), but I don't quite understand how you could get a wide-angle image with a 300mm lens. The lady at the gallery didn't get it either. She was ANNOYING with all caps!

Penelope had a grand time at the park just down the street from Main Street. She had the most fun hanging out in a little walkway tube. She also had a lot of fun spreading her legs & peeing all over part of the play structure. WTF. How did she get her diaper to move out of the way?!? Thankfully no one else saw so we were able to discretely clean up her mess.

We had a lot of fun, but now we're pooped. I'm certainly ready for a nap.

Mr. Elephant

For my portfolio to apply to the Industrial Design program at BYU, I was told to include sketches and drawings. Unfortunately I didn't have any good drawings, so this semester I came back to school for sixth or seventh hour art once a week or so. As of today, my drawing is complete.

TaDa!

My new blog

It's called It's Gotta Get Worse for a Day, and it's about my adventures as the youngest and only one at home. Hopefully it's not stupid. over and out.

-Brookinator

Flower Girl

Between the prairie-style dress, the moppy hair and the flower she's smelling; Penelope looks like a hippie. What a sweet little tree-hugger.

CHEESE

Penelope now knows that when I have the camera out she's supposed to say, "Cheese!"


She even puts my camera equipment up to her eye (like a lens or the flash or something) and faces my direction and says, "CHEESE!" like she's the one taking a photo. I tried to see if she would take a picture with my camera, but she backed out. Maybe it's because the camera weighs 15 lbs.

The Most Interesting Man in the World

Watching Chris study the GMAT isn't the most interesting thing in the world, but he was there & I wanted to test out my new flash diffuser. This is what Chris looks like on the nights when he's not pumping iron:

I Haven't had Hair this Short Since I was a Toddler.

Here's me with my giant mass of hair. I went without a haircut, not even a trim, for seventeen months. Yes that's right, seventeen months. This particular photo must have been shot on a Friday, because for the entire school year I crimped my hair every Friday. (Except one in March when I forgot...)


Here's me with my giant mass of hair again. Except obviously it's not attached to my head anymore. The top of the braid was a good inch and a half in diameter. It was intense.


Ta Da!

"Sweet" Graduation Gift

Really though, it's oober rad. I won a free cake from a lady in my ward back in January at a Relief Society event. But that's when I was doing the no-sweets thing with my friends and then I lost track of time and blah blah she never made my cake. Anyway, she decided to surprise me with this fine work of art. It's fashioned after my Graduation Announcements. Thanks Margie!